Today's Opinions

When does that ethereal entity known as a soul enter a fetus? Many religions say it is at the moment of conception.
There is no legal or civil determination, nor should there be since a soul is a purely religious concept.
Some states have enacted laws that call the termination of a pregnancy, at various stages, murder. If murder is defined as “the killing of another human being,” we have come back to the basic question: Is a fetus an individual human being or a soulless growth that is an integral part of an individual person?

Last week, with little fanfare in the media, the TSA airport passenger inspectors boasted that the Patriot Law allowed them to strip-search any airline passenger at any time for no reason at all — that means your little son, or your grandmother.
This was followed by the TSA threat of inspecting train and even car passengers.
Clearly our Congress has created a Frankenstein, one that is not accountable to the U.S. Constitution and the 4th Amendment prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure.
It is ironic that even Hitler’s Nazis did not X-Ray or grope German passengers, while TSA employees are doing it to Americans every day.

A few days ago, the sweet young blonde woman newsreader gushed on the noon newscast that the Census has announced that New Mexico’s April 2010 population was just over 2 million.
Actually, this number, 2,059,179, was released three months ago.
So much for television’s immediacy. The “news” that sunny March 15, which I think the blonde lady missed, was that the Census had done its first public release of a huge amount of New Mexico data.
For those of you interested in this material and who also are, uh, “challenged” by getting there, here are some initial steps, offered because this ain’t easy, even perhaps for the unchallenged.
On the Internet, start with www.Census.gov.

I certainly agree with John Pawlak’s March 11 letter concerning some decisions made regarding Los Alamos street planning.
Indeed, Trinity Drive can be made to look more attractive, but it should not be made a copy of Central Avenue, a mere one block north.
Function is critical.
A snow plow trying to clear Central Avenue around the cutouts is painfully slow.
Traffic lights placed strategically can solve most pedestrian problems.
As a friend explained, we need either one thoroughfare in town or a bypass.

In July 2010, based on its qualifications and experience with designing roadways, MIG, Inc. was awarded a project to study the N.M. 502 corridor from Los Alamos County’s east boundary to Diamond Drive and to develop a design recommendation conforming to several requirements for modern roadways.
This corridor includes all of Trinity Drive.

Much of the discussion regarding the new design of Trinity Drive evolves around the density of traffic.
Why do we allow a State Highway, SR502, to commute through the center of Los Alamos?
Why not investigate an alternate route such as Los Alamos Canyon?
There is an old road in Los Alamos Canyon that exists from SR4 to past the ice rink. It could link to a round-about at Trinity and Diamond and disperse the same amount of traffic to the Lab, North Community and downtown.
It would require more creative thinking, time and effort.

The Middle East has the capacity to destroy the United States.
Not by sending terrorists to bomb our cities, but by wasting our resources in futile efforts to bring western democracy to a region and culture that doesn’t want it or understand it.
Much as it rends my heart to see the Egyptian military re-assert its control after the so-called “revolution,” and to see the Libyan rebels about to be massacred by Libya’s maniacal desert sheik, President Obama is absolutely correct to keep our military out of it.